The Viral Court
by HonourTOne
Summary: after code:veronica.This is a branch off and a cross over between several different elements. It comes from Alexia's side, rather than the usual STARS view.
1. Introduction

Disclaimer: you recognize it and it's not mine.  
  
Author's Note: Don't read if you're not willing to look at resident evil through a different microscope.  
  
Sitting on the hood of my car, I stared silently at those opposite of me-A fierce red haired woman and cold, calculating man. After a few drawn out moments of uncomfortable silence, I finally began to speak.

"The Angels' are moving," I said, running one slender hand through my long dark hair. "Angelous cannot hold them off forever."

"My husband knows this well enough, Honour. Have you only called us here to reiterate such bitter news?" The red haired woman had a red hot temper to match. Liana Darkstar knew how to wield that double edged knife well; like an intricate talent or charm of sorts. But she had yet to really know the power of patience and refined words.

Flashing her my ebony gaze, I considered her words for a moment, before carefully choosing my own.

"No, I called you here because I don't think it has sunk in yet. Tell Angelous to withdraw, Liana, and to take your son and the other Guardians with you. That includes, you, too, Dark," I added, gazing a Dark for a moment, knowing that he was stubborn as hell.

Opening his mouth to protest, Dark was soon cut off by Liana. "Where do we go Honour? You have your precious plane, full of your viral security and manipulated by the mythical Alexia Ashford, but you fail to realize how it feels for us of weaker planes."

"Honour—" Dark began but was soon cut off by a steady hand I raised.

"I know your anger, Liana, but throwing such petty words at me will not help you. Dark, I know your arrogance, your greatest strength yet most woeful weakness, but there is no logic in any argument you might provide. Go into hiding; take shelter in your stronghold in Guardian city. Realize that my hands are tied. Alexia has commanded me to remain out of this fray. I cannot get too involved. Even now I say too much." I grew quiet after that, in an eerie way almost. Raising an eyebrow at me, Liana looked about quickly, while Dark did so slowly, as if expecting spies to have finally showed up. Blinking slowly, I waited for their caution to die down. There was nothing living within miles of us. I didn't have to send my mind out to know that. The T-Veronica Virus had sharpened my senses-not dulled them.

"Honour," Dark finally said in his gruff voice as I finally began to open my eyes again, "We can avoid this no longer. My men are being persecuted by those damn Angels. I had hoped that an increased Guardian population would help, but it will not. There's not a plane left to help us-You T-Veronicas fight for only your own benefit, the Angels are breathing down our necks, and Dante is too occupied with devil hunting. The Four Planes are in a bind. Would you watch us falter? You have no love for that gang of oppressors, but surely you do for the Guardians."

Sighing, I stood up off the hood of my car, readjusting my leather jacket as I eyed Liana, and finally, Dark.

"There's nothing I can do. As you said, I fight for only my own benefit. And as it is, I'm late for a meeting with Wesker, and I have no intention of pissing off one so close to my Mistress Alexia." Turning away, I opened the car door and slide into the black leather seat, closing the door once I was comfortably in.

Pressing her lips together, Liana eyed me coolly. "We wont survive---I'll see you in Hell."

"Yeah," I said with a small smirk, playing into her anger, as I put on my thin black sunglasses. "Me and all my mutated buddies." Pulling away, I began to drive back to my plane.


	2. The mortal before the mistress

Disclaimer: See previous chapter. Hell, if you recognize it, it's not mine.  
  
I stepped out of my car as I stopped at the gate to my estate. Finally back home in the T-Veronica territory, I paused to review the brief meeting I had had with Liana, and Dark. Shaking my head slightly, I walked over to my gate. It was a simple gate, really. It was made of silver, vaguely decorated. It could easily be broken by any being with pools of strength.

Walking over to hinges of the gate, I saw a tiny blue monitor screen open from out of the gate, waiting to allow access. When I approached it, I rested my right hand on the screen, and waited for the hand screening to be done. A young female voice, with a British accent, sounded from somewhere. The voice sounded very young, like a girl at the age of 9 or so. The voice belonged to a computer system meant to represent and sound like Alexia, the Grand Mistress T-Veronica, when she was a child. My mansion housed another system similar to the Alexia one, except it was of a young boy. A boy by the name of Alfred, the brother of Alexia. I've come to call them The Red Queen and the Blue King, respectively."Welcome back, Mistress." The doors swung open slowly, silently.  
  
"Red Queen, take my car back to the garage; I'll walk, instead." And with that, my car moved through the gate and toward a building in the northeast corner of my estate. I glanced around gently, my ebon gaze finally resting on my house. It was grand. Money was never a problem in this underhanded world I call my life."But was it worth it?" I silently asked myself. I looked down to the ground, remembering:  
  
"What is the problem, officers?" I heard my mother say from the hall. I instantly stopped doing my homework and tilted by head toward the hallway.  
  
"May we speak to your daughter," The officer looked around in his pocket until he pulled out a piece of paper and read something on it. "Cecelia, Madam?"  
  
"Of course," my mother replied. I was instantly aware of what this meant, and I tried to review all things that I could have possibly done today that were considered illegal. I couldn't think of a damn one.  
  
The officers entered the kitchen and took a seat at the kitchen table, across from me.  
  
"Hello, Cecelia. I am Officer Charles Murray from the Maryland State Police, and I'm here to ask you a few questions. Do you understand?" he asked. I nodded slightly and he then continued, "You are the girlfriend of a Mr. Steven Burnside, are you not?" I nodded again. "When did you last see him?" "At 4 o'clock on Friday" I replied.  
  
And so it went on. As the questions followed one after the other, I grew more worried and irritated.

"Officers," I cut Mr. Murray off, "What is this all about exactly?"  
  
"Mr. Burnside was kidnapped earlier this week, and there have been mysterious rumors circling his disappearance." Pausing for it to sink in, and quietly added, "Thank you for your time."

The officers turned to leave but then, still in complete shock, I blurted out, "Well, where the hell is he?!!!!" My voice began to rise as I stood up. Me and Steve had been dating for awhile, and I truly cared for him. I loved him.  
  
In order to calm me down, they agreed to tell me a little of Steve's disappearance, though it was dry information; the bone with no meat. They had received evidence pointing to a small island off Europe's western coast, though it was skeptical. They also had radio static originating somewhere in Antarctica. They left, the officers, soon after. That night in bed, I couldn't sleep. All I thought about was Steve, possibly dead somewhere. Constantly, I turned over in bed, to the point where lying down did no use. Sitting up, I slid off my bed and began to pace in the dark.

"Steve what did you do-how could you let this happen..." My thoughts went from worrying for Steve to blaming him for what turmoil he may have created. "God helps those who help themselves..." flashed in my thoughts. Suddenly, I stood rigid. Yes, God does help those who help themselves. Perhaps it was the ignorance of youth, but I became rash as I hurried about in my room to get dressed quickly in a pair of old, faded jeans, and a black baggy sweatshirt. I got my 9 mm from down in the basement and headed out the door quietly. I used my car and drove to the airport for private planes. My uncle owned a plane and taught me to fly it last summer. He gave me a pair of keys just in case I ever needed them. Clasping those keys in a tight fist as I drove, all I could think of was this objective, to save Steve.  
  
Arriving at the airport, I sighed. How to get past the guard...past the damn gate. Parking my car in the nearby brush of the woods, I slinked my way over to the airport's entrance. Crouching down, I crawled past the guard station and through the considerable amount of room under the gate. Deciding to remain hidden for a while longer, I quietly crawled to a small garage just north of me. Arriving, I quickly opened the lock with one of the keys held tightly in my hand. Gently opening the doors open wide, now was the time to hurry, for someone may have seen those doors open. Hurrying in, I looked up at the plane. It wasn't very big. "As long as it takes me to Antarctica, I'll be fine," I thought. Maneuvering myself into the aircraft, I strapped myself in and began to work the controls. My hands were shaking out of fear and excitement, barely able to do as I commanded, it seemed. Starting up the engine, I pulled out into the runway, seeing small figures in the dark running towards me, yelling things out in vain. Pulling away, I flew as fast as I was allowed.  
  
Several hours later, I climbed out of my plane, shivering from the Arctic winds blowing from the west. I had landed next to what looked like an abandoned base. If a base is what you would call it. Most of it appeared to be burned, and appeared to have been...blown up, almost. Rubble and debris scattered the ground everywhere. What happened here?

I found a loose door on one of the walls, and I managed to slip myself through. It was bleak inside, and cold. Water dripped far above and landed with a light tapping on the cement.  
  
I walked through the base for several hours, hearing strange noises every once in awhile. Upon coming across a strangely, decorated door, I opened it to find a small private garden. "Mon dieu..." I muttered. I walked along for a brief time, eyeing a bizarre, miniature carousel to my left before I came upon another set of double doors. Upon opening them, I appeared to have stepped into a great manor. Portraits, although slightly burned, lined the walls. A grand staircase, or what was left of it, loomed before me. Just then I heard a door open to my right. Turning abruptly, I saw something flying at me...  
  
And then I woke up...9 years later.


	3. Change

Some things will always come back to haunt you....it's in your blood.  
  
Disclaimer: see previous disclaimers  
  
I awoke to a bright light somewhere above me. I went to move my hand to shield my face but I couldn't move. I was weak and tired. So tired.  
  
"Hello my Legacy, my Heir. I've been waiting for you," said a voice from somewhere to my right. It was a beautiful voice, a woman's, and it had as slight British accent. She sounded intelligent, beautiful, witty, and powerful. Slowly moving my head to the right, I saw a figure. My eyesight was slightly blurry and the lights surrounding me from thousands of nearby lights made it hard to see. But I recognized the figure. It was me in a mirror. I was on a metal bed with white sheets. My deep brown eyes were shining with light, and my skin was pale. So pale. It was white. My long dark brown hair laid about my face and body, and several strands were hanging over the edge of my bed. My body was thinner than it had been before, years of disuse and little food leaving its mark.  
  
Looking back up to the ceiling, I began to familiarize myself with my surroundings. I was slightly cold and goose bumps began to rise all over my arms and legs. I was on a bed, naked, but covered by white linen sheets. And then, I felt it. A sickening feeling began in my stomach and rose out of my throat. I sat up in bed as if chased by the Devil in all of his Evil Glory. And then I began to cough. It was so violent I knew that I must either stop or die.  
  
I stopped.  
  
Falling back, I landed roughly against the bed. My body was covered in cold sweat. Breathing heavily, I felt another round of coughing coming. "Oh, Lord, spare me," I thought over and over again. This is pure madness. Except, what I thought was coughing turned out to be something different, something....else. I do not know how to explain it. I could explain it for centuries and yet, my attempts would be in vain. But whisper its name in the dark to Terra, and rest assured you would find it more effective. It was power in a horrible form: Heaven in a crude vial, Liberty in a cage, and Love wrapped in hate. This power, the madness of bliss, engulfed me and stripped me of all my senses. My skin brightened as if a fire glowed beneath it. And fire, I'm afraid it was. It burned the sheets and the bed, and made my hair an inferno of its own. My body turned gray and vines-if that is what you would call them-rose out of my body into mounds upon my flesh. My nails sharpened and lengthened. I watched all of this in the mirror in horror. But then, something surprising happened: it stopped. Vanished. Disappeared. I was back to my thin, pale self; wrapped in my long brown hair, watching myself with my dark brown eyes.  
  
Someone placed a robe on me from behind. I saw her in the mirror. She smirked at me, as if she knew all the secrets of the world, but would take them to her grave. I saw her kneel down and lean her head toward my ear. It was a bit funny. I began to laugh a laugh of insanity. Here she was, a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress kneeling down to me. Me. Haloed with golden hair, and set with blue eyes, she was beautiful; a princess in the legends. She was dressed in a black and red gown, covered with semiprecious stones. White gloves graced her hands, and heeled shoes carried her divine self. She whispered into my ear, then, "I will tell you all of them." I began to laugh even harder. She knew that I desired to have the smirk leave her face, and that, I, in turn, would know all the secrets of the world. It was Vanity, pure vanity that drove me to such thoughts. "She will tell me!" I thought over and over again.  
  
Turning my head into her chest, my dark hair falling like a veil over my face, I began to cry.


	4. Embrace

Staring numbly at the piano in front of me, I put out my fingers to touch its ivory keys. Smooth, very smooth. The grand thing in itself was made of blackwood, polished to a gleam that would rival the moon. Selene would be jealous, as all goddesses might be. Dropping my hand into my lap, I sat still for several minutes. And then she came, the Mistress of Knowledge in her usual lavish attire. She was the most beautiful woman I ever knew, if a woman is what you'd call her. More like a beast who dines in the halls of kings.  
"Ah, but we are all naturally born evil. It is our human nature." She smirked and told me as she drew nearer. I turned my head slowly towards her, not because I really cared for what she said, but merely because she was saying something. She seemed to read minds without really trying, a gift the Delphic oracles would have been smitten with. Turning my gaze back to the piano, I attempted to tune her out. She destroyed my life and I did not know why. Once again, I could feel her drawing ever nearer, as a spider does to the fly. Like the fly, I knew death was inevitable, and that it would surely take me. But this was not why I hated her. 'God kills people, why can't she?' I thought. Whether I believed it or not was a very different thing.  
"You don't believe me?" she said, as if it were all a grand and wonderful joke. She laughed, then, as if the whole world was laughing with her. I looked back at her, feeling true emotion for the first time in days.  
"If I may," she asked, surely not expecting an answer. A lack of movement from me seemed to be all the encouragement she needed to begin talking of what I was quite sure would be a wonderful speech. And so it began:  
"Human nature is based on one's life and treatment thereof. A corruptive lifestyle together with false entities on the belief that evil seems to prevail over good will result in such appalling personality traits: a pessimistic view on life, unhealthy life styles and habits that routinely present themselves; immoral practices that try one's soul inconspicuously. The individual will be so convinced in the evil of the world that they will be lead to the belief that their misery comes from such evil. They will be unaware that the evil itself evolves from within them as a result of their belief that evil comes elsewhere. Evil is truly a great trick. Slight of hand for the slow, Sanctuary for the weak, Stability for the disturbed. We as human beings tend to associate our reality with our tragedies. Thus, we may promote the existence of evil as a result of acquiring one taste of reality. That taste is delicious in a repulsive manner. It is Vanity. Pure Vanity that drives us to such lengths to acquire such tastes. We are merely in love with an image of evil that exists only within ourselves."  
  
And so it ended. Smoothing her gown and humming softly, she acted as if we had just talked briefly about the weather. I suppose that she believed that society was always corrupt, which is why all humans were born evil. That may have been true. Hell as well as Heaven knows that every society will at least have one thing, idea, or person that is corrupt. The prestige of good societies, things, ideas, and people had long been dead to the world, and they took goodness with them.  
"Play for me." Three simple words she spoke to me then. They were not sweet or kind. They were bitter and commanding. It didn't matter. The treachery that she asked of me did not change in her tone of voice. Could not change. I had no urge to play this thing, this piano. It was a device for mere mortals, not immortals like me. I was not told of my immortality, rather, I merely lived knowing it. I knew I was something different. My blood was no longer human.

She grabbed my fingers then with a painful force. Of course, it's not painful to a body that is numb to pain. She placed my fingers roughly on the ivory keys, those smooth ivory keys, and then she sat back in her chair, her cold blue eyes glaring at me. I smiled at her grimly and then looked back at the keys.  
It must have been hours until I played that first note. It was beautiful. Masterful. It hung in the air like death on Holy Ground. And that second note, oh it, too, was wonderful. Before I could stop myself, I soon hit the third, and then the fourth. It was ecstasy. Happiness and such mortal emotions flooded back to me. I felt like my old self playing my own game. It was in these moments of playing that I finally understood what had happened. My immortality was not the evil I had believed it to be. It was a gift, and that I, Cecelia, would become something majestic compared to my former self. I frowned slightly. Cecelia. My mortal name has no place here. Leave my mortal name with my mortal world. Honour, I thought then. The only mortal ideal I could love, the only one I cared to live for. The ideal, I found, that bound me to Alexia for all the years to come.


	5. Instruction

"Steve's dead." Her voice was gentle and soft, like silk—soft, deadly silk.

Turning my ebony gaze away from the sun filled window, I eyed Alexia blankly. Ivory lips slightly parted, I could find no words to comment on them. Clutching my thin white gown, I turned away from her, my dark hair flickering out behind me.

"Why do you torment me so?" I said finally, the stillness of the room becoming too overbearing.

"Do you wish to see him?" There was a smirk in her voice. As if challenging me to ask for more torment.

"No!" I hissed, running to the doors of the grand room and yanking them open, sprinting into the sun filled hall of this vast, remote mansion. Turning a corner sharply, I came to my room, and fell to my knees in front of my oak door, clutching the golden door handle as my eyes filled with salty tears.

Shakily, I stood up and opened the door, dragging myself in and into the darkness. And the sight that meet my eyes-the horror! Screaming, I pivoted quickly from that mutated corpse on my very bed, only to run into the stone hard grip of Alexia Ashford. Clutching my shoulders, seemingly very easy, she looked down at me gently.

"Liar," she said. "You wanted to see him," were the words that went unspoken.

"No....no! You placed him there. I had no idea!" I said frantically, my gaze moving rapidly over her face and finally into her glacier eyes.

"But you wanted to see him-you were almost hoping for it!" She hissed at me.

"Never-I never wanted to see him hurt-"

"There's a fascination with death no one can refuse. It's old as time itself. Just look back on those public burnings. People gathered from far and wide to witness it. Like all their questions of death would be answered."

"No-not him who I love."

"Especially he whom you love. We only mutilate that which we love."

Something about her words seemed completely true, but I wouldn't admit it. "Oh, let me be, let me go," I said mutely, almost crying as I tried to pull my hands from her grip. I wanted to cover my face and keep from looking into those haunting eyes.

But she wouldn't let me go. "Admit it, Honour. Admit it, my woeful heir."

Looking down, my hair forming a dark veil about my face, I silently cried. "Beautiful liar. Thief of life. I admit to it, but only out of contempt for you."

Dropping me, I feel limply to my knees and hands. Not daring to look up, I brought my hands to my face.

"I admit it—I wanted to see him. Some intriguing part of me....Take him from my room, whore of time!"

Alexia laughed lightly, walking over to the bed. "I do whore time, and now, so do you, my apprentice. We shall give the world something new to believe in. Something new to worship and kill for."

"Leave me, Alexia." My voice was stern, as I finally looked up; however, my back was to her, to the bed and 

Walking past me, she quietly said, "I am your Grand Mistress now. You shall refer to me as such, Mistress."

Pressing my lips together as anger at the mere sight of her rose, I saw her smirk and eventually her lave the room. Standing up quickly, I turned around. Steve was gone. A tape laid there now, where he had once been. Walking warily over to my bed, I picked it up and held it in my arms, feeling the weight of it. It felt very light, almost light as air. Like new formed strength. Casting a cautious look at the small television in my room, I took a deep breath as it seemed to look back at me eerily in the dark.

Walking over, I bent down and inserted the tape into the VCR. An image appeared on screen. And image of a brown haired woman walking down a long, dark hallway. She was pretty, with a quick step and well fitted in that jean and red vested outfit. And there, at the end of the hallway was Steve....tied up. A prisoner. I bit my lip, not sure if I wanted to see what may be the end of Steve's life.


End file.
